When two isolated networks are merged together communications between those two previously isolated networks may depend on the topologies of each respective network. Typically, network administrators must go through the difficult task of understanding topology of both networks, and creating the necessary configuration on the merge point to translate packets from network into the other. Given the human element, that process can be time consuming and error prone.
An example of the above environment is VMware Cloud Foundation™ (VCF) or similar hyper converged infrastructure. Customers can purchase one or more VCF based server racks, which are connected using a leaf-spine network topology, and integrate the VCF network system into the customer's existing network having its own network topology. VCF software has knowledge of its own network topology but is unaware of the network topology of the customer's network, as the customer network could have an entirely different network topology. Integrating these two isolated networks requires a lot of planning and manual configuration on the transit switch(es) therein.